Published online before print July 13, 2009
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* Departamento de Microbiologia e Parasitologia, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianopolis, SC, Brazil; and
Wistar Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
1. Correspondence: The Wistar Institute, 3601 Spruce St., Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. E-mail: ertl{at}wistar.upenn.edu
An efficacious vaccine to HIV-1 is direly needed to stem the global pandemic. Immunogens that elicit broadly cross-neutralizing antibodies to HIV-1 remain elusive, and thus, most HIV-1 vaccine efforts are focusing on induction of T cells. The notion that T cells can mediate protection against HIV-1 has been called into question by the failure of the STEP trial, which was designed to test this concept by the use of an E1-deleted Ad vaccine carrier. Lack of efficacy of the STEP trial vaccine underscores our limited knowledge about correlates of immune protection against HIV-1 and stresses the need for an enhanced commitment to basic research, including preclinical and clinical vaccine studies. In this review, we discuss known correlates of protection against HIV-1 and different vaccine strategies that have been or are being explored to induce such correlates, focusing on T cell-inducing vaccines and particularly on Ad vectors.
Key Words: correlates of protection adenovirus vectors STEP trial animal models